Read Online In Memory of Junior by Clyde Edgerton - Free Book Online Page B

after sixty-five years of toting shingles and nailing roofs and these little women can’t buy a pair of bed sheets cause they cost so much—you looked at the price of bed sheets lately?—and they don’t have time to powder their nose much less wipe their
own
ass and they don’t even get
their
names wrote down in a . . . a two-bit beggarman’s matchbook.
    The world is a funny place.
    The problem is that people don’t have the eyes and hearts to judge up on somebody like me or Miss Laura, but they shore judge up Mr. Basketball.
    Law, I don’t usually get riled up but sometimes I do. My son Lorenzo Junior’s the one crazy about that Michael Jordan. We call him Lorenzo now, we used to call him Junior. He drove to Wilmington to pier-fish, told me about that road, that new 1-40 they made such a fuss over.
    Oh yeah, speaking of Junior. Mr. Bullock, he name his two twin sons the same as him—William Dean, Jr., and William Dean, Jr. So, somebody say, what you call them? and he say, Billy Dean and Billy Dean, and somebody say, really, is that so? well, how you tell them apart? and he say, oh, one’s a little darker than the othern.
    Speaking of chiren, that teenager that spends the night over here brought her little boy the other night. She’s got two I think. I didn’t say nothing, but I don’t think Faye would like that. She don’t do a very good job, but it’s hard to find somebody that do. I don’t know what they pay her. She ain’t much older than that boy of Tate’s and got two boys herself. There ought to be a law against marrying before you’re growed up.
    Tate brought that boy of his over here for a visit this afternoon. Mr. Glenn always asking after him. And he always saying stuff to Tate like, “You been by to see Bette lately? You seen Ansie lately? You took Morgan by to see them lately? Bring him by to see me again real soon, Son,” and you can tell by the way that boy of Tate’s walk that he ain’t interested in setting the first foot on the first porch step to this here place.
    He follow his daddy on in there, lagging behind, and Mr. Glenn see him and kind of light up and put out hishand, and I wonder can he see all that hair and all them clothes with the holes in the knees, and that earring, and soldier boots, and stuff like that. Nobody in my family ever wore the first piece of clothing with the first hole in it or the first patch that show. I don’t understand what get into their heads. What could make a child like that?
Morgan
    On the way to the airfield, Dad decided to stop by and see Granddad and then Aunt Bette and Aunt Ansie. It’s like all these generations or something. He didn’t say anything about going to see them until we got in the car and I didn’t have a choice. I’m glad Mom doesn’t have a bunch of relatives to visit. Especially old ones. It would be okay if there was something to do once we get there. But it’s the same old stuff over and over. And then they beg me to come back—which would be okay with me if it was like
interesting.
    About the time we passed Uncle Sam’s Army Surplus, I thought about the stuff we’d been studying in history and all that stuff Mom told me about Dad’s medal, so I asked Dad, “How many people did you know that got killed in the war?”
    â€œRight many,” he says. He glanced over at me.
    â€œWhat about the time you like won the medal?”
    â€œI had a good friend who got shot down and I tried to save him but I couldn’t find him on the ground. Some clouds came in and I couldn’t see him. I could talk to him on the radio, but that’s it.”
    â€œRadio?”
    â€œHe had a hand-held radio and was trying to tell me where he was. Why are you suddenly interested in this?”
    I told him we had some stuff going on in school about it. Actually I was wondering if he’d tell me the same story he